Archives For April 2010

CareerCast.com (a job search site) did a survey, and weighed 21 factors that can create job stress. “Factors that weighed into stress levels included work environment, job competitiveness, opportunity for advancement and even perceived risk of unemployment.” The results?

Yes, firefighters, surgeons, cops and pilots have stressful jobs. Bad stressful, not good stressful. People die and get maimed and horrifically scarred, physically and emotionally in these professions. That’s stress.

But advertising and public relations? C’mon. We’re here to help people, and sell stuff and change attitudes and perceptions and behaviors. Sure, it’s stressful. But nobody dies. Nobody gets maimed. There are no explosions, guns, fires, cancers, or crash landings. The scars are quite tiny by comparison. We get free pizza and make TV ads and we create art and have fun and laugh. And nobody dies.

I’ve known tons of ad folks over these 20 years, and I’d say only a handful were stressed out to the point where it affected their life. Most took the stress as the fuel. The juice. The energy of the job. And many absolutely loved the juice. I sure do. It’s a daily, exciting affirmation of being alive.

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The Gomers heard that Smart Studios in Madison was going to close. Over the last 25 years, Gomer members have spent a lot of time there, recording with Butch Vig and Steve and Duke before they were producing stuff for Nirvana, U2, Green Day, and before they became Garbage. Lil’ Dave Adler of the Gomers has been recording there for over 30 years. Many great times, laughs, and creative tingles have happened there.

It’s a really special place. Like a secret fort clubhouse hideout. So when we heard it was closing, the only logical reaction was “we have to record one last record there.” So we polished off some tunes we had laying around, and recorded them. Mike Zirkle engineered, and once again proved his remarkable skill. He is such a great guy. All praise Mike. The band was in top form.

This will be the first Gomers recording in a few years. The band has been busier than ever, playing at least eight shows a month, usually more. Rock Star Gomeroke, the live band karaoke at the High Noon Saloon is a runaway hit, with six shows monthly. Its five year anniversary is coming up in May. In fact, a local website, dane101.com, recently named Gomeroke one of the coolest things about Madison or some such. The Slappy Hour Variety Show at the Frequency happens twice a month, and is building a really cool following. (I’m kinda more like a guest Gomer, doing one-ish gig a month. But the guys haven’t kicked me out yet, so that’s cool. Thank you, gents.)

Look for the record to be completed in May, with some kind of record release party to follow. I think it’s the best stuff the band has recorded. Lots of rock, fun, and soulful grooves.

After playing together for almost 25 years, Biff, Steve, Dave, Gordon and Geoff have become even better songwriters, musicians, and remarkably, they’ve become an even better band. Plus, they’re some of the nicest, coolest and most creative guys on planet Earth.

Who’s creating consistently better advertising than Old Spice right now? Tough call, given all there is to dig about what they’re doing.

I dig the strategy, in that it uses manly exaggeration to sell the hell out of the beauty product. I dig that you KNOW what’s being sold here, and why it’s a good thing. I dig the manly tone of the manly copy: it “devastates” odors for 16 hours. I dig the director choice. I dig how they altered the Old Spice musical theme with the actor Terry Crews singing “pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-power!”

What do I dig most? These ads are funny, and funny leads to memorability for the viewer, and added word of mouth. You could watch `em 10 times and laugh 10 times. You’ll tell your pals about it while whining about your NCAA brackets. That, friends, is a very hard thing to do.

Bitching about the tactic of the yelling guy: it’s funny – but. Being in the edits, and in all the post production, and listening to Terry Crews yell and yell and yell certainly got to a point of “please punch me in the head with a log.”

Bitching about the category: body wash is a ripoff for consumers. Use soap. A bar. If Old Spice’s target audience really wanted to be manly, they sure as hell wouldn’t use a bottle of soap. Puh-leeze. Plus, compared to the manufacturing and packaging of a bar of soap, those damn body wash bottles are a massive environmental headache.

Imagine being a crazy soccer/football fan. On the night of a HUGE game, you’re asked to not watch the game on TV, but to go to a classical concert. Watch how Heineken used this premise for a stunt that’ll be talked about for years.

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A few months ago, I tried an idea on Facebook: write a story with my friends, one line at a time. It’s kind of like crowdsourcing creativity within your own circle of pals. The idea is based off of an improv game we played years ago in ComedySportz called “Story.”

I tossed out the title of a story last week, “The False Love of the Vending Machine Poet.” Thirteen people contributed to this tale. There were Kit-Kats, plimsoles, strippers, janitors, Beevis, alligators and lederhosen. I jumped in at the end to provide an ending.

Gus, the old janitor shuffled by, looked at Anderson as he lay in a heap in front of the vending machine, still clutching a KitKat bar, and mumbled, “Damn kids and their drugs.”

In the shadows, a twentysomething with a disc in the lobe of each ear stifled his need to sneeze.

A half-empty pack of Luckys slipped out of the torn pocket of his leather jacket and spilled its contents on his plimsoles.

He retrieved the cigarettes, placed one between his lips with a mirthless smile and scruffing Anderson by the collar, dragged him across the linoleum.

And that’s when he saw the alligator.

It was a stuffed alligator with a ripped seam. Brought back by Anderson during his youthful adventures into the vending machine jungle. There are machines that sell just about anything. Actually, the stuffed alligator machine wasn’t really all that successful….lots of left over gators in the warehouse. There was a knock on the door.

Anderson opens the door, unaware of how his life will forever be changed by the simple turn of a door knob – a brilliantly polished brass door knob, actually…wonderful ceramic paisley patterns embedded in a most peculiar design, almost cool to the touch…digressing – ”Helmut?!? You said you were in Berlin?!’, Anderson blurts (a brief memory … See Moreof a lederhosen-clad evening in Prague – or was it Minsk? – flashed through his mind). ‘Ja…eet ees me…Helmut”. His mind racing, Anderson waves Helmut in silently knowing there is much work to be done.

The door closed behind him, Helmut is greeted in Spanish by Herr Fritz Grutzner, “Buenos dias Helmut. You esta late.” Clicking the heels of his ebony boots, Anderson said, “It is all my fault, Commandant Grutzner. There were rumors of vending machine operators in the vicinity.” (The endearing, enduring memory of that night with Helmut iin Prague, … See Moreor Minsk, inspired a new boldness in him.)

Raising one eyebrow and smiling in his menacing way, Grutzner said–rhetorically, it was really an order–“It is time to Tango. Bring in the musicians!”

All the while, the receptionist, seated nearly, never even looked up from his copy of Hobby Farm magazine.

He couldn’t stop thinking of cute little Frau Guttzmeinger whom he wished to marry just as soon as she graduated from Ashenwurtzen Tech.

But suddenly the receptionist DID stop thinking of comely little Frau Guttzmeinger, as his attention swung from his baser instincts to the one true passion of his life: grammar. And he realized that the story in which he existed had tilted out of the past tense into the present tense and back into the past tense again. It was too much for him. … See MoreHe pulled a bottle of Tanqueray from his desk drawer and poured a finger or three, and let his mind wander to the pluperfect, and the fact that he was overqualified for this job.

One month later, with Kit Kat chocolate smears on his fingertips, Anderson sat down to plunk out a few lines on his old strawberry iMac. It was a poem about the choice millions of people face at vending machines every day – E7 or A3 or D11? “Helmut,” Anderson asked. “What’s a synonym for ‘snack’?” Helmut paused, suggesting to his long-lost brother: “Munchable.”

With that, Anderson added the final line to the only poem he’d ever written, now the only poem he’d never finished. “Despite doubling the doubles, and stuffing the gators, I deliver buffets of options, like dehydrated potaters; alas, the only love I have is that I am the humble messenger of the munchable.”